Bitter Sprint at Valencia: Mir takes out Marini, Honda sidelined, and a penalty for the final GP

The worst-case scenario, the one no team wants to see. It happened to Honda HRC Castrol: Joan Mir’s mistake also took out Luca Marini, the entire team out of contention shortly after the start of the MotoGP Sprint in Valencia. The Spanish rider immediately made an apologetic gesture in the gravel after the incident, then clearly spoke with his Italian colleague once they were back in the garage, since neither of them managed to restart. “I’m sure he accepted them, Luca is a good guy and nobody wants these things to happen.” Afterwards, Joan Mir received a Long Lap Penalty, a sanction to be served tomorrow during the final GP of this 2025 season.

“It’s clear that I’m sorry, I’m not a rider who usually makes this kind of mistake. I apologized right away, I really didn’t want it to happen.” Joan Mir immediately acknowledges his full responsibility for the incident in today’s sprint race. He then goes on to explain what happened. “In Turn 1 I touched with Aldeguer, in Turn 2 I touched with Binder... That’s because I was on the outside,” he stated, as reported by Motosan. “The start wasn’t great and I had some issues in the first two corners that made me lose three or four positions.” He dropped back, then immediately tried to make up ground. “I overtook Ogura and when I got to Luca I wanted to pass him at Turn 2. It wasn’t a spectacular braking move; I just braked a bit later than him, went into the corner, a mix of cold asphalt, tires not fully up to temperature, and well, that was enough to make me crash.” Perhaps a touch of over-eagerness, considering the Sprint had just begun? The fact remains that Honda HRC walks away with a double zero, and tomorrow Joan Mir will have to serve his penalty.

“I think the whole team would prefer not to have them.” This is how Joan Mir comments on the not-so-distant milestone: nine more points and HRC would lose them. For the Spaniard, it’s decidedly positive news. “If we lose them it’s positive, but it’s more of a symbolic thing,” he added. For now, however, there’s only one focus: not repeating today’s disaster. “I have to concentrate on the first corners,” he emphasized, also admitting the choice of a tire perhaps not ideal for the RC-V. “For me the front tire conditioned us. Not being able to choose the hard takes away a bit of our braking competitiveness and we don’t have the best grip, so we don’t have the same potential as the others.” Mir, however, needs a good result: looking back over his season, we find a lot of retirements, more due to crashes than technical issues, with the highlights being two podiums in the full-length races in Japan and Malaysia. Given today’s disaster, something more is needed, at least to close out the 2025 season.